SCIENCE AND PRACTICAL NEEDS 3 



the usage of making seven days a unit of time de- 

 pends on the religious belief and astronomical science 

 of a very remote civilization. The usage is so com- 

 pletely established that by the majority it is simply 

 taken for granted. 



Another piece of commonplace knowledge the 

 cardinal points of the compass may be accepted, 

 likewise, without inquiry or without recognition of its 

 importance. Unless thrown on your own resources in 

 an unsettled country or on unknown waters, you may 

 long fail to realize how indispensable to the practical 

 conduct of life is the knowledge of east and west and 

 north and south. In this matter, again, the records 

 of ancient civilizations show the pains that were taken 

 to fix these essentials of science. Modern excava- 

 tions have demonstrated that the sides or the corners 

 of the temples and palaces of Assyria and Babylo- 

 nia were directed to the four cardinal points of the 

 compass. In Egypt the pyramids, erected before 

 3000 B.C., were laid out with such strict regard to 

 direction that the conjecture has been put forward 

 that their main purpose was to establish, in a land 

 of shifting sands, east and west and north and south. 

 That conjecture seems extravagant ; but the fact that 

 the Phoenicians studied astronomy merely because of 

 its practical value in navigation, the early invention 

 of the compass in China, the influence on discovery 

 of the later improvements of the compass, make us 

 realize the importance of the alleged purpose of the 

 pyramids. Without fixed points, without something 

 to go by, men, before they had acquired the elements 

 of astronomy, were altogether at sea. As they ad- 

 vanced in knowledge they looked to the stars for 



